It's fair to make an opening critique of the NYT's privacy policy, based on word count, because that is the main metric the NYT uses for the visualizations in t

It's fair to make an opening critique of the NYT's privacy policy, based on word count, because that is the main metric the NYT uses for the visualizations in the article. But the article's claims don't rest on that metric, so to assert that the NYT has "basically everything that they're criticizing Google for" requires more evidence and specifics. Especially when we consider that the info Google solicits and stores is by every standard far greater than anything the NYT collects, which means that the potential damage from abuse is also far greater. So it's worth asking why you think Google having fewer words for its privacy policy is, even on a facile level, an argument for its favor and not against it, considering Google has far more kinds of data and ways to share it. But let's go with your claim, that NYT's policy is "basically everything" that they critique Google for. You mention NYT sharing name and postal address with advertisers and direct mailers – while that's something that has been an industry (in general, not just media) practice well before the computer age, let's agree for the sake of argument that it's still evil, and both the NYT and Google do it. What other privacy policies/potential abuses do you see them sharing? We might assert that both companies say they collect and store location information, but on closer reading of the NYT's policies, I see some specific and substantial differences: On ad-targeting: > The ads in our apps are not targeted to you based on your current GPS location, but they are targeted to you based on your ZIP code or device's IP address. On retention: > If you elect to have a location-based search saved to your history, we will store that information on our servers. If you do not enable the location-based service, or if an app does not have that feature, the app will not transmit to us, and we will not collect or store, location information. So I didn't scour the policy pages completely -- I tried to find info based on keywords, e.g. Ctrl-Fing for "location", "gps", "ip", so I apologize in advance if I overlooked something. But as far as I can tell, Google does not state a limit to the precision of location info they give to advertisers. And they do not say that users have the option to opt out of location-processing, nor do they state if it's possible for users to deny the transmitting of location info, period, in the way that the NYT says "we will not collect or store location information" if a user disables it. Again, I apologize if I've missed a similar specific statement in Google's policy. That's a key difference in scope of data collection and retention, one that strongly rebuts your generalization. But more to the point, it's a difference in scope that has extremely obvious differences in actual impact. I think it's safe to assume if the NYT were subpoenaed for a user's IP address (such as someone making illegal threats in the comments section) they would comply with authorities. But if the NYT were subpoenaed for the timestamped location info of a user accused of crime, and known to use the NYT website/app, the NYT, if it follows its stated policy, simply cannot comply, because it has made a decision to not track or store that info without user approval. That doesn't seem to be the case with Google. And the consequences to the user are not theoretical – Google has already acknowledged that it complies with sweeping requests made by law enforcement, such as "the coordinates of any phones that were in the area between 7:30 pm and 10:30 pm" on the night of a suspected arson fire [0]. You can argue all you want that Google is just following the law, but the fact remains that they choose to collect and store this info. And that being the case, claiming that the NYT's privacy problems are "basically everything" of Google's, seems so facile as to trivialize the debate. Disclosure: I just noticed that a former student of mine is listed as a co-author, and I'm assuming she was key in creating the data visualization and analysis. [0] https://slate.com/technology/2019/02/reverse-location-search-warrants-google-police.html https://slate.com/technology/2019/02/reverse-location-search...